I’m curious what sort of shortcomings you saw? I’m no expert of the genre, but foe me I thought it was just very samey in gameplay, while still bringing some interesting twist to the table with the masks. And as you said, that art direction is incredible. Still, it felt very much like Eden Ring in Italia. Not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose. I’m still tempted to get it.

I’m having a similar fatigue yeah. It really is amazing visually, the attention to details is fucking unreal and the environments are just so diverse… But it’s definitely the same old same old. Main thing that’s improved is the maneuvrability, where you can some really amazing feats of climbing, to the point I thought I was doing a really hard mission when I was in fact just going the wrong way (up a cliff). That’s another thing I’ve been having difficulty with : I do like that they listened and did the whole not showing you where the objective is, but some of their hints are fucking atrocious and I’ve spent way too much time searching the area never to find it. Unfortunate. Anyway, at some point I took a break and haven’t picked it up since. Just kinda forgot about it. Same with Origins. I just arrived in Atlantis, but haven’t felt any irrépressible urge to get back to it, despite my thorough enjoyment of the game.

And then to take it private because being public means Ubisoft is focusing on pleasing shareholders instead of making great games. The whole message is… unexpected, to say the least. Like a bunch of gamers got together to stop Ubisoft killing itself.

That’s some seriously interesting stuff. I had kind of forgotten there was still some actual quality content out there, so thank you for that!

Again.

Seeking one final chance again.

Sometimes the game itself doesn’t really tell you what it is. That’s not completely shocking.

It’s the American way!

Forget about that, just let hackers at the source and free that code base and those assets. This whole story is insane!

This better not awaken anything in me!

So it’s back to silent protags, isn’t it?

I wonder if it’s a Japanese thing because the only other game I recall doing something like that was the Dark Souls remaster whatever. They at least had the decency to offer something if you owned the original but fuck having two copies of the same game with slightly improved gfx.

Let me see if I can improve on that summary : “Alright, look, we know, okay? But dude! So. Much. Money !”

So does that compensate for all those pirated games that people actually do play?

I wish long press would just show us a choice wheel, right thumbstick to pick my choice, done. Free the left and right foe other stuff.

I do appreciate your point of view. I just disagree about the “it’s been like this for ages and we’re used to it and it’s part of the difficulty”. Good UI should cause no friction.

I do agree a paused menu with quaffing health potions mid-strike is bullshit. But if things are gonna be real time (not even slow down while in menu wheel like many others) then there is no reason to stick with ancient traditions. It would be simple enough to have an item wheel instead.

As it is yeah, I do play with a handicap. It’s fine, I’ve beaten other games with similar issues (from my POV). I’m just super annoyed about subpar UX in software. I’ve seen too many in my career and too many people enduring bullshit UI… so it really rustles my jimmies when I see the same problems in games. You know, software that’s supposed to provide fun.

It’s really not an ER specific pet peeve of mine; I’ve endured shitty UI/UX for the last 37 years and so I’m a bit grumpy about it, is all.

The problem is that the controls for anything other than the fighting are rather clunky. It’s not something specific to ER, but rather gamepad based games, for some reason. I’ve the same issue with Horizon Zero Dawn. In both games I play pretty much with the weapons, the healing and that’s about it because fuck all that shit about cycling through options in the middle of a fight.

Well deserved. It’s not just a technological wonder, it’s also a genuinely solid game choke-full of amazing details.

I stopped buying EA for Mass Effect 3, I believe. Haven’t missed them.

Come on now, let’s be honest : as long as the community keep doing the work for them, their games will be popular. All they gotta do is make it easy to make mods and the jankiness and stupid decisions can be patched over and made into something great that actually pleases everybody, because everybody can decide to fix what they want.

The problem is their delusion that people love their games as they are.

À really cool watch, thank you!